‘I now actually do want to take your guns. All of your guns. Right now,’ magazine editor declares
May 21, 2018 5:30 pm
Esquire’s editor-at-large penned a letter of sorts to the National Rifle Association and blasted the organization in the wake of the Santa Fe High School massacre in Texas.
In his Friday piece for the magazine, Dave Holmes accused the NRA of having “bought our government” and convincing its “members that the occasional school shooting, the odd literal slaughter of innocents, is an unfortunate but inevitable quirk of American life, a thing that is necessary to preserve freedom.”
His main point?
But Holmes’ thesis was summed up in the following three lines:
Anyway, I just wanted to drop you a line and let you know that I now actually do want to take your guns.All of your guns.Right now.
‘It wasn’t always this way’
“It wasn’t always this way,” he added in the magazine piece. “I have responsible gun owners in my family. I’ve never been a fan of shooting at things myself, but guns sure do seem to have brought joy into the lives of some people I love, and as long as they were stored properly, I never had a problem with them being around. I believed that we should place a hurdle or two between a psychopath and an AR-15, but that’s about as ardent as I got. Live and let live, that was my policy. Even with death machines.”
He continued, “That has all changed. And you changed it.”
Holmes said the NRA “had the opportunity to work with the vast majority of Americans who support the sensible reform of our gun laws. You have had the chance to preserve your own rights as we work together to keep our gun regulations in step with gun technology. You haven’t.”
He mentioned that bump-stock manufacturing could have been banned and minimum ages for gun ownership could have increased and gun-safety studies could’ve been done — but instead the NRA battled against such changes and took “to our television screens to tell us that the world is an apocalyptic hellscape, and that the only way to be safe from gun violence is to stock our homes with guns.”
‘The ground is shifting. Get ready’
More from Holmes’ piece:
I was stunned and sad after Parkland. I was heartened by the efforts of the young people who watch their friends get murdered in front of them. I watched you make nice with them on CNN and then, behind their backs, call them terrorists. And then this morning I watched the same goddamn thing happen again, only this time at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, where at least ten people are dead. As though all of the marching and organizing and common-sense talking had never happened. As though this ever growing pile of young bodies is worth nothing.So now I’m angry. Now I’m finished trying to reason with you. So now I, a guy who was ambivalent about guns just a few years ago, want to take your guns away. All of them. I want to take them all and melt them down and shape them into a giant sphere and then push it at you so you have to run away from it like Indiana Jones for the rest of your lives. I want Ted Nugent to roam the halls of his gunless house, sighing wearily until he dies. I want to end this thing once and for all, so that all of you who have prioritized the sale of guns over the lives of children have to sit quietly and think about what you’ve done. God help me, I want to take all of your guns out of your hands, by myself, right now.
He concluded by saying, “It’s happening. We tried it your way, and it really did not work. The ground is shifting. Get ready.”
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